


The Hell's Kitchen Dept. of Power & Water

by 2ndA



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Angsty Schmoop, Aquaphobia, Friendship, Gen, Phobias, Summer, Swimming Pools, Water, not slashy but maybe pre-slashy?, overcoming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-08
Updated: 2016-05-08
Packaged: 2018-06-07 04:55:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6786130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2ndA/pseuds/2ndA
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So, I read an old daredevilkink meme prompt for Foggy teaching Matt to swim, because Matt, as a poor city kid, never learned, despite all his Daredevil shenanigans on the piers. The prompt itself was so cute I just had to give it a shot. (original prompt: http://daredevilkink.dreamwidth.org/3230.html?thread=7288734#cmt7288734)</p><p>Remember the heatwave that starts season 2?  This is set around that time, so Foggy knows, and Karen doesn't.  Beyond that, no major spoilers.</p><p>                 “Marco,” Foggy calls suddenly.</p><p>                 “Say what?”</p><p>                  And Foggy’s laugh travels over the water until it sounds like he’s standing right next to Matt.  “Hopeless, Murdock!  You are hopeless.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. old men are made of the sea

_May came home [from the beach] with a smooth round stone/as small as a world and as large as alone_

                                                                                                                                                                             

“—because, obviously, I am a terrible person,” Karen is announcing decisively as Matt enters the building.  Through the office door, through the layers of insulation and laminate flooring that separate the foyer from Nelson & Murdock’s second-floor offices, he can hear Foggy’s weary dissent.

“You are not a terrible person, Karen,” Foggy says dutifully, and it clearly isn’t the first time he’s tried to make that point during this particular conversation.  Matt smiles to himself as he dances the tip of his cane up the stairs: good luck convincing Karen of anything when she’s made up her mind.

“I am.  I _am_.  An awful human being who puts my own comfort ahead of any morality.  Gentrification is the bane of this neighborhood and Citiwide Development is no better than Union Allied—or, okay, maybe not quite so bad.  But I should want nothing to do with them!  I should deplore their discriminatory, carpetbagger ways and not be tempted by their lovely, cool rooftop oasis that probably gets a great breeze 24-7 and…”

Karen is simultaneously sighing with longing and laughing at herself as Matt opens the office door.

“And has a Caribbean-themed bar that serves piña coladas made with real piña, yes, I was listening the first time.  And the second,” Foggy finishes her sentence without looking up from the morning paper.  Matt can smell the ink on his fingers. “Hey, Matt, you took Spanish—is piña a real thing?  Also, please tell Karen that wanting to go swimming in the middle of a heatwave is a perfectly human response and not a sign that she is, I quote, ‘a terrible person and a waste of space’.”

“Morning, Foggy.  Hi, Karen.  You’re an excellent use of space—what’s this about swimming?”

“Oh, nothing,” Karen’s blushing.  Matt can tell because the flush comes over her so quickly that it actually raises the already-elevated air temperature around her for a second.  “The AC in my apartment is on the fritz again and coming up from the subway I walked by that new luxury condo building that Citiwide Development just finished,” Another sigh of longing.  “They have a pool on the roof.”

“I told her she should just flirt with the doorman, but apparently Citiwide Development International has filled their pool with, like, liquid discrimination or something…?”

“I did _not_ say that, Foggy!” A feathery, brushing sound, and Matt can imagine Karen sweeping her hair back, the way she does when Foggy teases. “I just meant that, you know, I disagree with the way they do business, coming in here, driving up property values, trying to turn Hell’s Kitchen into an extension of Midtown.  Not to mention using up resources—I mean, can you imagine their water bill?  And Babatunde at the shoeshine stand says they leave the pool lights on all night!  So,” Matt notices a swell of perfume when she crosses her arms, resolute. “So, I wouldn’t swim there, anyway.  Even if my employers paid me enough to afford the no-doubt-obscene cost of a pool membership.”

“Matt,” Foggy hisses, “I think that last bit was directed at _us_.”

“Yes, thank you for clarifying, Foggy.” Matt props his cane up in the corner by the coat rack and hangs up his jacket.  It’s too warm, but he’ll wear it to file a child custody petition at the city clerk’s office in the afternoon.

“But, of course, Karen’s only saying that because she doesn’t know about the annual Murdock and Nelson Fourth of July Employee Family Picnic and Swimming Extravaganza.”

“What?!”  Matt hears the word leave Karen’s mouth a moment after he says it himself.

“Karen, did you really think our reasonably adequate Obamacare benefits package, courtesy of Healthcare.gov, and our scandalously-low-considering-your-experience paycheck is all we have to offer here at this boutique legal practice?” Foggy continues, smooth as a game-show host, though Matt can tell from his heartbeat that he’s just making things up as he goes.

“No?” Karen asks, sounding like she’s biting back a smile.

“Of course not!  Here at Nelson and Murdock, we care deeply about our employees.  And their families.  And friends.  Neighbors, pets, we pretty much care about everybody. Hence our family picnic policy.”

“You don’t have families.   Or picnic policies.”

“Sure we do!  Well, OK, Matt doesn’t, but I have enough for both of us—seriously, I have, like eight hundred cousins—but anyway, as part of our family-friendly family, uh, policy, we knock off work on July 4th and take all our employees—that’s you, Karen—to the beach at Coney Island.”

“Coney Island?”  Matt echoes.

“Foggy,” Karen is outright laughing now, “you just came up with that idea right now, didn’t you?”

“Not my fault if you didn’t read the Family Picnic Policy section of the employee handbook,” Foggy sniffs.

When Karen tries to talk while she’s laughing, sometimes the air gets caught in her chest.  To Matt, it sounds like soap bubbles popping. “ _What_ employee handbook?”

“Karen!  Haven’t you written us an employee handbook yet? Jesus, Matt, what are we paying her for?”

“The beach at Coney Island?” Matt repeats.  He’s glad he’s the only one who can hear his own rapid heartbeat.

“Yeah—you can get there on the F train on 6th Avenue.  Or the D train, if it's running.  We went all the time when we were kids, my brothers and me and all my cousins.”

“We’re going swimming at Coney Island?”  Karen sounds delighted. “You and me and Matt?”

“Yup.  Sand, semi-polluted surf, and all the screw-top, no-glass-on-the-beach libations you can conceal on the subway!” Foggy declares magnanimously.  “Ain’t no party like a Nelson & Murdock party.”

***

Mid-morning, Karen leaves for the bank: they have two checks from their most recent clients, which will keep the wolf from the door for a little longer.

Two minutes later, Matt senses Foggy standing in the doorway to his office.  Behind him, he can hear the rickety old fan spinning on Karen’s desk.

“I noticed a distinct lack of enthusiasm for my beach trip, but I’m sure that’s just because my spidey-senses are not as finely tuned as, say, the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen.”

“Foggy.”

“Do not _Foggy_ me on this, Matt.  Do you know what Marci was paying her assistant at Landman and Zack?  And that guy was nowhere near Karen’s league.  This is why _I_ am in charge of the HR Department.”

“We don’t have an HR Department.”

“Well, we only have one employee, but it’s not like you’re offering her any perqs! Look,” Foggy’s voice drops, confidential.  “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.  Things have not been…I don’t know what exactly has been going on with Karen lately, but I just think she could use something good in her life.  The beach?  Is good.  We can do this.  Why shouldn’t we?”

“I’m not saying no,” Matt protests.  “You _should_ go!  You two have done more than your fair share around here the past few months.  You both deserve a break.”

It’s only because Matt has known Foggy for so long that he can tell his friend is rolling his eyes. “Man, I think you are missing the _family_ part of my brilliant _family picnic_ scheme. I can’t go to the beach with Karen by myself.  It would be awkward. Awkwardness would ensue, Matt. You know me. Plus, the last time just Karen and I were out together on anything that might be construed as recreational, _buildings_ exploded.  That night is literally the last thing I want her thinking about on a holiday weekend. Come on— July 4 th! It’ll be balls-hot; the courts will all be closed; there will be, like, a million cops on duty everywhere.  Don’t tell me you have anything else to do.”

“It’s not the date, Foggy…”

“Good! ‘Cause, you know, Fourth of July celebrates the Declaration of Independence.  And while this law firm has weathered a lot over the past year, I’m really gonna pull the plug if it turns out you don’t like representative democracy.”

Matt can’t help but smile when Foggy sounds earnest like that.  “I like the Declaration of Independence, Foggy,” he repeats obediently.

“That’s a relief!  I don’t know what I’d do with all that extra letterhead if we really did dissolve the firm. So…Coney Island.  Swimming.  What’s the problem?”

Matt’s stomach had twisted when his partner mentioned dissolving the firm, even though he knows Foggy isn’t serious.  That’s probably why he tells the truth—Foggy’s put up with too many lies already: “I can’t swim.”

“You mean it _was_ only my mom who dragged all her offspring to the 63rd Street Y for swim lessons because she was convinced we’d drown in the bathtub? I’ve always suspected as much…”

Matt interrupts;  Foggy’s stories about his mother’s legendary over-protectiveness can get epic. “I mean it, Foggy.  I can’t swim. I never learned.”

“Oh, please, Matt,” Foggy protests.  “I know you’re what might charitably be called a perfectionist, but we are not talking about preliminaries for the Olympic 100-meter freestyle here!  All I’m asking is that you show up and just doggy paddle in the shallows. And I promise I will personally mess up anyone who makes fun of you in your Speedo—including Karen.  I hope she realizes that Nelson & Murdock has a very strict anti-harassment policy.” 

Matt can feel Foggy look up at him, expecting a laugh, can sense the way his friend focuses—the way his concentration suddenly _settles_.

“Matt?” Foggy has been known to deploy that gentle _no, but seriously, buddy?_ tone to devastating effect during voir dire.  “Look, you grew up in the city. I get it—it’s not like there are country clubs and swimming holes all over the place.  And I know it was just you and your Dad, not a lot of disposable income, and he probably worked some crazy hours, even before…” Foggy drifts into silence before he actually has to mention the accident. 

The fan on Karen’s desk turns eight revolutions.  Foggy is still looking at him, Matt can feel the attention like a brand.  Distantly, Matt hears a key turn in the front door, hears Karen’s heels on the worn flooring downstairs as she stops to check the mailbox.   She still dresses like she’s working at a major Manhattan office, because she thinks their down-and-out clientele deserve professionalism.  Foggy is right—both that she’s better than they deserve, and that things have been rough for her lately.  Foggy usually _is_ right, where other people are concerned.

Matt takes a deep breath: he can taste the Freon from next-door’s air conditioner, the melting tar from the street out front.  Today really is a scorcher.  And then, just as Karen starts up the steps, he spits it out: “No, Foggy.  I mean I _can’t.  I can’t_ swim.  I don’t—I’m afraid of the water.”

The fan’s blades turn two more times before Foggy wrenches open the office door.  He’s startled to find Karen on the other side. “Oh.  Hi.  I mean, bye.” The coat tree rattles as he untangles his own suit jacket.  “I’m going to the city clerk’s office. Custody petition won't file itself.”

“Now? I thought Matt was goi—” Karen starts to say, but Foggy is already thumping down the stairs.

Karen sighs like a punctured balloon.  Matt hears her cross over to open the filing cabinet and slide the deposit slip into the correct folder.  Her footfalls are not as light as they were crossing the foyer, climbing the stairs.  Four fan revolutions. “Are you and Foggy fighting?” She sounds tired, but not surprised. “Again?”

Matt shrugs, annoyed.  “Must’ve been something I said.”

***

Karen leaves early that evening—which, because she’s a consummate professional, really means she leaves on time for once.  Usually, she’ll stay late, especially if her AC is broken, and they’ll all end up at Josie’s, which is refrigerated to near-Arctic temperatures from May to October.  But tonight, she has clearly had enough of both Nelson and Murdock.

Foggy does stay late, organizing statements related to a rent strike and pointedly ignoring Matt, who stays because he’s waiting for Foggy to tell him what’s wrong.  Finally, he hears Foggy’s spine crack as he stretches, the dry, light sound of pages being gathered into folders.  Matt’s not quite sure how to start the conversation—Foggy usually does it for him—but he goes to stand in Foggy’s doorway anyway.

“So. I don’t…”  Matt shrugs again.  He’s been doing that a lot today.  “I don’t like deep water. Never learned to swim, never wanted to learn.  Lots of people don’t. It’s hardly a crime.”

“Matt,” Foggy takes a deep breath and blows it back out.  “It is just. Too. Goddamn. Hot for me to sit here and discuss your potential _crimes_.”  He punctuates by stuffing folders into his briefcase; when he’s finished, his voice goes cold. “Although I have no doubt they are many and varied.”

“ _Hey!_ ” Matt tends to forget, because Foggy doesn’t get angry very often, that when he does, the gloves come off.  “That has nothing to do with any of this!  I thought we were talking about swimming.”

“Might’ve escaped your notice, Matt, but Manhattan is an island.  Let me define that for you: a landmass surrounded entirely by water, in this case, the Hudson and the East Rivers.”

“Lived here all my life, Foggy, so…?”

“I have asked—I pleaded…I have _begged_ you, as your best friend and as a pretty damn good lawyer, not to do what you do, Matt.”

“I don’t want to talk ab—”

Matt feels the current of air as Foggy holds up both hands.  Surrender.  “I know.  I know you don’t, and I know when I’ve lost a case.  Your Honor, let the record show: there is _nothing_ I could do or say to persuade Matt Murdock to stop taking on dangerous criminals in hand to hand street brawls.  But, seriously, how many of those criminals have centered their activities on the docks, Matt?  Sixty percent?  Seventy?  There are reasons the gangs are in Hell’s Kitchen and not out in Armonk. For you to keep fighting criminals on an island when you don’t know how to swim, when you’re afraid of water…”

“Foggy, it’s not like I hang out on the docks for fun!”  Matt doesn’t like having the word _afraid_ thrown in his face.  “You want to ask a human trafficking ring to change their transportation method? Be my guest.  Ditto with the drug cartels.  Double for the—”

“Four days ago, the police pulled a _body_ from the water at the Manhattan Cruise Terminal.  That’s 52 nd Street, Matt, practically right down the block.”

“I had nothing to do with that,” Matt says immediately and he _hears_ Foggy’s shock.  It sounds like a sudden stillness; Foggy literally doesn’t breathe for a moment.  _Denial_ had not been the response his friend was expecting. 

The old office chair, bought as a job lot during a fire sale, squeaks as Foggy sags in to it. 

“I didn’t mean,” Foggy starts.  Then, “Jesus, Matt, I never thought _you_ had killed the guy,” he says, and then his voice goes unusually quiet.  “But I did think, for a split second when they first announced it on 1010-WINS…I did think it might _be_ you.  Daredevil-you. And that was before I even knew about the water thing.”

“Foggy, I’m careful.  You know I am.  And you know what I can do.”

Matt had once observed that Foggy’s breathing changed when he was about to say something important.  It changes now.

“Honestly, Matty, I’m a laissez-faire kind of guy.  If you were just a regular citizen, I’d say you were welcome to any phobias you wanted to indulge in.  Me? I’m not nuts about mice.  But if you keep doing what you are doing—in this _waterfront_ neighborhood on the _island_ of Manhattan—some day, sooner or later, it will be you on a pier, or a dock, or a barge.  _On the water_. And if you’re _scared_ …that might not be an emotion you’ve got a lot of experience with, so believe me when I tell you: you won’t be able to concentrate and you _will_ get hurt.  And I will—I’ll hear on the radio that a body was found floating in the river, and…”  Foggy’s voice sounds water-logged.

“I’ll learn,” Matt says, suddenly, without thinking.  He’d say almost _anything_ to soothe the anxiety vibrating in Foggy’s throat.  “Okay? I’ll, I’ll learn.  To swim.” And he means it, even though he regrets the words as soon as he says them. He _hates_ deep water: it distorts temperatures, muffles sound, obscures distances.  Immersed in water, you can’t taste or smell the right kinds of information.  Every movement is warped by waves and ripples.  Swimming will be like being newly-blind all over again.  But for Foggy, he’ll try.

“You bet your crime-fighting ass you will,” Foggy confirms.  Matt is so distracted by the enormity of what he has just agreed to do that he almost misses the plastic bag that comes flying at his chest.  He grabs it just before it falls to the floor.

“I stopped at one of those tourist t-shirt places on the way back from the clerk’s office,” Foggy explains as Matt’s questing fingers encounter the synthetic, waterproof fabric of swim trunks.  “There’s a heart and a big red apple printed on the butt.”

Matt sighs. “Classy.”

“Beggars and choosers,” Foggy replies, unsympathetically.  “And I looked up swim classes at the Y.  Forwarded the dates to you.  If you open up the Outlook calendar, your computer should read them out.”

But Matt shakes his head at that. “No.”

“No?” Foggy’s voice rises, like he’s going to make something of it.  And in the mood he’s in, Matt figures, he just might.

“I’m not going swimming for the first time at the Y.”  Sometimes, after a long period of meditation, Matt likes to think he has almost, _almost_ made peace with the many things he will never be able to do as well or as independently as others.  But he is not going to face this particular fear in a public pool full of kids in water-wings and grannies enrolled in water aerobics. “I have a better idea.”


	2. children are made of freshwater

_For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)/ it's always ourselves that we find in the sea_

 

Wilson Fisk’s sudden incarceration has had a sobering effect on real estate in Hell’s Kitchen, and the Citiwide Development International Corporation hasn’t yet started accepting bids on its new condos.  The place smells new, reeking of paint and plastic.  It even _sounds_ new: lots of hard, glossy surfaces to bounce the noise of traffic through empty, echo-chamber interiors.  It nearly gives Matt a headache from a block away.  He suspects CDI is going to lose money on this venture.

Foggy whistles. “Babatunde’s right: they do leave the pool lights on all night.”

Matt drops Foggy’s arm for a moment to run his fingers over the raised hands on his watch.  Almost 7:00: the lights would just start to be visible in the summer evening.  “Doorman?”

“Some sort of security…rent-a-cop, right inside the front door.  Just for show, probably, especially if there’s no one in the building yet.”

The security guy smells like cigarettes and Gatorade—the blue kind.  “C’n I help youse?”

“Good evening,” Matt gives his most innocuous smile.  He is wearing his jacket and his glasses, standing a half-step behind Foggy. “We’re the disability consultants.  Here to meet Ms. Lopez?”  The last time Manhattan published a phone book, there were fourteen alphabetical pages of Lopezes. No way an organization as big as Citiwide doesn’t have someone by that name on the payroll.

The guard’s chair squeaks as he swivels from Foggy to Matt.  “Huh?”

“The disability consultants?” Foggy repeats.  And then, channeling the many bureaucratic drones he’d met at the city clerk’s office.  “Oh, God.  Don’t tell me.  She cancelled.” He huffs.  “Did she cancel?  This is the third time.  Do you know how much Citiwide is going to lose if we don’t sign off on this building?”

Matt can see hot, red shadows swaying faintly when the guard shakes his head.

“Well, there’s a little piece of paper called the Americans with Disabilities Act, my friend,” Foggy begins, expansively.  “And Citiwide has hired us to make sure this building is in compliance with that piece of legislation, before they open it to the public.  Because afterwards? Man, have you ever tried to put toothpaste back into a tube?”

The guard chuckles and this is a real superpower—one that Matt can only covet.  Foggy has been talking to this guy for, what, sixty seconds, and already they’re on the same side: low-level worker bees dicked around by a corporate overlord that has more money than sense.  So what if the guard has never heard of a ‘disability consultant?’ Citiwide has probably had consultants for every other aspect of construction, and Foggy _did_ show up with an honest-to-God disabled person. 

“I’d letcha in, I would,” the guard says sympathetically, “but they only got the safety lights turned on in the building.  Just the pool and the elevators; none of the other electrics is up.”

No security cameras, Matt calculates.  It’s almost too easy.

“No prob.  My guy here, he can see in the dark.” 

Matt wiggles his eyebrows above his glasses and they all have a good laugh at that.  The security guard’s heartbeat is regular and unsuspecting.

Foggy’s weary sigh.  “Look, buddy, this is our last stop.  We should’ve been finished two hours ago, but have you ever tried to take the subway during rush hour from Red Hook?!”

The guard chuckles again.  “Yeah, my sister-in-law, she lives out there and she always says…”

“Uh-huh,” Foggy manages to convey agreement and brotherhood without ever actually hearing what the security guard’s sister-in-law likes to say.  “Give us…whaddaya say, fifteen minutes?”  Matt nods.  “Fifteen minutes, we’ll be out of your hair.  File the papers tomorrow, first thing, and if Ms. Lopez ever does bother to show up, you can just send her right in to find us.”

The smell of primer and vinyl increases when the security guard holds open the door.

By Matt’s watch, it only takes twelve minutes and fourteen seconds for them to find a convenient fire security door at the back of the building and…unsecure it.   They leave the building with an impressive stack of ‘disability paperwork’ borrowed from the Murdock and Nelson recycling bin, wave goodbye to the friendly security guard, walk around the block, and enter the building through the firedoor.  Matt almost wishes things hadn’t been so simple.

***

Access to the pool is a little trickier: Matt sheds his jacket, climbs up to the roof from a penthouse balcony, scales the retaining wall, jumps the safety fence, and drops to the pool deck.  He stretches out his arms, but the space is so flat and open that he doesn’t touch anything.  No shelter, nothing to conceal him from anyone who might be watching.  _Earth is empty and void, and darkness moves upon the face of the waters._   The smell of chlorine is overwhelming and there’s a humming from a filter or a pump or something.  He can’t hear, he can’t…if there’s anything waiting for him in the fiery shadows, he won’t know it until it’s too late.

And then, over the sound of the pool—“Matt?  Hey, Matt?  Yell if you fell to your death ‘cause I’m not looking.” 

“I’m fine, Foggy,” Matt calls down toward the balcony, because of course, there’s no one but Foggy to hear him.  He runs his fingers along the fenceline until he finds the door that leads down to the top floor. That’s easy to open; all the security is designed to protect against undesirable people coming _up_ from the streets of the Kitchen.  The enclosed stairwell feels safer and, at the bottom of the stairs, Foggy is waiting, smelling stressed and familiar, holding Matt’s shoes and his cane, jacket folded over his arm.

“Breaking and entering,” Foggy mutters, “We could get into _so much trouble_.  Have I said that already?”

“You’ve mentioned it, yes.  But I think we could plead out with illegal trespass.  I know some good lawyers.”

“Such a comfort, Murdock!”

“…and that’s only if we get caught.”

“Let’s _not_ do that, okay?  Can we agree on that? Let’s not get caught…Oh! Oh, wow,”  Foggy says when he reaches the pool.

“What does it look like?”  Matt asks.

Foggy describes the dimensions of the pool, the placement of the lights—“they’re not _all_ on, but I think Karen’s not wrong about the electricity bill”—the garish Caribbean bar complete with fake palm trees.  And then he adds, “Plus, Matty, the stars are coming out.  We’re about as close to them as you can get in Hell’s Kitchen.”

Matt tips his head back automatically, tries to remember what stars look like on a summer evening.  A breeze, oddly sweet this high above the streets, wafts over the rooftop.  The traffic, the Kitchen—it all sounds very far away.

“Did your mom really worry you’d drown in the bathtub?”  Matt asks, mostly to delay the inevitable.  He can’t imagine his father ever being preoccupied about something like that. 

“Well…she may have been more concerned that my brothers would accidentally dunk me while playing Aquaman or something.  And we did go to the beach a lot, Coney when we were little; Cape May later on, if it was a good year for hardware sales.  Plus the Central Park fountains and the open fire hydrants. Ma couldn’t keep five kids in an apartment all summer. So it was a reasonable precaution, I guess.”  Foggy’s voice has a special timbre when he talks about his family; it’s one of Matt’s favorites.  “Anyway, I liked swimming lessons.”

“Really?”  Matt knows he sounds dubious.  It’s just…the idea of willfully giving up all control to step into a foreign element—for fun?

“Matty, no doubt this will shock you,” Foggy begins wryly, “but I wasn’t the most…shall we say physically graceful?” Foggy pauses; Matt can hear the _snick_ of laces and he unties his shoes.  “Yeah, not the most physically gifted of children.   Just between us, I was a klutz.  Now, if you needed to know the Giants draft picks, or the Mets starting lineup, or anybody’s box scores, I was golden.  But—throw a ball, catch a ball, tackle _anything, ever_? Not a hope in hell.  As my brothers and my cousins would be happy to tell you.”

“But…swimming?”

“Swimming.  OK, I’m not sure I should say this, considering the present company, but swimming made me feel like a superhero.  Like I could fly.  Or bend gravity.” Foggy’s voice is muffled as he pulls off his undershirt, but Matt is careful to keep his face straight.  Who is he to tell Foggy that superpowers aren’t all they’ve cracked up to be?

“I went to the beach once,” Matt forces himself to say as he undoes the buttons on his shirt.  “Not with my dad, this was after…the nuns had a field trip or an outing or something.  Jersey Shore, maybe?” He concentrates on slipping the plastic circles through the little buttonholes. He will not let his breathing increase.  It was a long time ago, and the mind always controls the body.

“Sounds nice,” says Foggy, deliberately neutral.  Matt can’t tell anything from his heartbeat.

“It was a nice _idea_ ,” Matt allows.  “But I didn’t—the sand bothered me, the way it moved under my feet and sometimes there were sharp things, shells and stuff, that I couldn’t see.”  To this day, he doesn’t like to be barefoot unless he’s meditating, or practicing fight sequences on a mat.  “And when I actually stepped into the water, there was this wave and all the sand got sucked out from under me and when I slipped, there was nothing to hold onto.”  Matt tucks his socks into one shoe, rolls his belt in the other, methodically folds his trousers on top.  His bare toes curl against the rubber matting of the pool deck; vulnerable.  His new swimsuit is in one pocket of his jacket. He leaves his glasses on ‘til the very end. “I kept coming up with handfuls of rocks and I couldn’t see—I mean, I _really_ couldn’t…There was grit in my eyes.  Everything sounded strange underwater and it all tasted like salt and dirt and I was so confused I tried to _smell_ where I was…”

“Not the _best_ idea, if you’re underwater.”

Matt laughs weakly.  “No.  Not a good idea at all!”

“Well, there are stairs here,” Foggy says, cutting suddenly to the issue at hand.  “So you’ll know how deep you are, and there won’t be any waves ‘cause there are only two of us and I’ll be right in front of you.  So…let’s do this.  Last one in, and all that. ” 

Until his foot actually leaves the warm rubber of the pool deck, Matt half-expects Foggy to give him an out.  Anyone else would, right?  _Hey, if you’re not up to it…_ Or, _you know, it’s okay to be scared of…._ Well, anybody but Stick.  Stick and Foggy, different in so many ways, but alike in this.

Foggy describes the five steps down into the shallow end of the pool, and the water is sun-warm until about the third.  Then Matt feels the currents of cold drifting in and his hands automatically clench tighter on Foggy’s forearms. Foggy, tactful for once, doesn’t say anything. 

There are no landmarks in the water, nothing to touch, nothing to help Matt orient himself.  Just the smooth tiled floor and the eerie lapping sounds, hard to localize because of the unpredictable way sound travels over water.  When Matt has managed to shuffle waist-deep, Foggy says, “I’m going to let go for a few seconds.”  And he does…but literally only a few seconds; almost as soon as Matt begins to wonder where he’s gone, he feels Foggy’s wet fingertips on his wrist. 

“Did you feel me go under?”

And Matt does remember a little splash, the water level changing slightly.  So that’s what it meant. 

“Water’s great…not too much chlorine.   Only the finest pool chemicals for Manhattan’s yuppies.  Go ahead, duck.”

And, with Foggy’s hand firmly anchoring one wrist, Matt does.  It is—not terrible.  The cool water is refreshing after the sticky, humid day.  Matt likes the way it creeps against his scalp, lifting his thick hair. If he concentrates, he can resist the urge to involuntarily try to suck in air the moment his nostrils dip below the waterline. 

Somehow, once he’s all wet, it gets easier to pick out scents and currents in the water and that makes it okay to let go of Foggy’s hand and navigate toward the side of the pool.  Because there is no roof, and because they are so high up, the water ripples against the edges of the deck with very little distortion.  Matt puts out his hand and, sure enough, there’s the smooth lip of the pool, right where he expected it to be.

“Marco,” Foggy calls suddenly.

“Say what?”

And Foggy’s laugh travels over the water until it sounds like he’s standing right next to Matt.  “Hopeless, Murdock!  You are _hopeless_.”

When Foggy swims over, Matt can feel the easy movement of his strokes, the rhythmic pull of displaced water.  Smooth, he thinks: fluid. He wonders what it looks like.

“Try to float,” Foggy suggests. 

“Hmm?”  Matt suspects that is an aquatic maneuver that might require his feet to leave the floor of the pool.  He is correct.

“You don’t even have to let go of the edge.  Just let your feet come up.  Your body is naturally buoyant.  You _want_ to float; just let it happen.”

Matt tries.  Twice.  But as soon as his feet leave the bottom, his whole body tenses up and his heartrate skyrockets so quickly it sets off echoes in his head. 

“Okay, here,” Foggy puts one palm on Matt’s back. “Lean back against me.  I won’t let you go under.  Give me your other hand and when you’re ready, squeeze mine and I’ll ease up.”

“But not until I say so,” Matt clarifies.

Foggy’s familiar eyeroll. Matt can hear it when he knows to listen for it. “Trust me on this one, Matty.” 

When he finally manages it, Matt decides that floating is like meditation.  The same kind of weightlessness, so simple that you can’t imagine how it took so long to learn.  He is still aware of everything, but it’s all at such a distance.  Far enough that nothing seems like an imminent danger.  He remembers to squeeze Foggy’s hand.  The fingers drift off his back.  Matt loses his equilibrium once and starts to sink, but Foggy is there, hand splayed right below his shoulder blades, gently nudging him back into alignment until his body finds its natural level.

Eventually, Foggy tries to teach the basics of the front crawl by verbal description.   The whole process is weird and spastic and requires Matt to do a lot of different things with different parts of his body all at the same time.  And remember when to breathe. He suspects Foggy enjoys the hell out of watching him flail across the short end of the pool.

“It’s not awful,” Foggy concludes diplomatically.  “But I wouldn’t give up your day job.  Or, you know, your night job.  And I _hate_ your night job, so that’s saying something.”

Matt tries to calculate the effect his arm will have on a large, liquid body, and then he chops the surface quickly enough to send a sheet of water splashing over Foggy.  He knows his aim is close because of the way Foggy spits and sputters.  He’s not quite so accurate in judging Foggy’s revenge, and he ends up taking a gout of water to the face.  

They splash and wrestle until Foggy finally hauls himself out of the pool.  “I’m wringing out my boxers now, Matt.  That’s my way of declaring a truce in this naval battle.  We’ve been up here almost an hour; stay much longer and someone is going to find us.”

Matt kicks back, letting himself float just a moment longer.  _You want to float_ , he repeats Foggy’s words, savoring this rare, private victory over fear. “Are the stars out?”  he asks, and he can’t quite make out Foggy’s answer because his ears are under water, but he thinks it’s affirmative.

One of the fake palm trees houses a storage locker that probably has towels, but Foggy decrees that really would be breaking and entering and Matt agrees to drip dry, just his feet dangling into the water.  He’s not ready to go home just yet anyway.

***

“So, Coney Island,” Matt says at last.  Now that he’s out of the water, his eyes sting a little; it’s just the chlorine, he knows, but it’s strange to be so aware of them.

“Yup.  Oh, and now that you can swim,” says Foggy, “we can go out on a boat!”

“A…boat?”

“Karen likes boats.  She was on the women’s crew team in college.”

“No kidding?  How did you know that?”

“Dunno—came up in conversation once.  Don’t sound so impressed.  _I_ could’ve done it.  If I’d been ten feet tall.  And, you know, a woman at a small liberal arts college in New England.”

“Foggy, do you know how _early_ people get up for crew practice?”  Matt has heard the steady thump of turning oarlocks from various college crew teams as he’d crossed riverfront rooftops in the early dawn.  He’d never wanted to get too close, of course, because of the water.  Maybe he’ll investigate, now.

“Anyway, company picnic at the beach.  No way you’re getting out of it now. I’m thinking we should get matching corporate t-shirts and everything.”

“Probably a good idea,” Matt lets his fingers drift along the twin scars below his collarbones.  Nobu.  He’d forgotten them, in the water, but Claire has reliably informed him that they look like the start of an autopsy incision.  (Which they are; he just happened to be alive when they were inflicted).

Foggy’s breath catches as he notices. “Oh!—I wasn’t even thi…well.  You know, there are lots of reasons to wear a t-shirt at the beach.  The SPF question, for one. Maybe you tan like a Baywatch babe, but we Nelsons do not: we fry.  Also, if Karen wears a bikini, I may have to sue _myself_ for sexual harassment.  So, t-shirts will be the order of the day!”

Matt smiles.  “Thanks, Foggy.”

“Don’t thank me yet—wait’ll you see the shirts!”

“I wasn’t talking about t-shirts.”

“Oh.  Okay, then.  Well, you’re welcome.  Any time.”

When the breeze picks up— the brackish Hudson, a little jet fuel, ozone from a distant storm—Matt can hear the water in the pool lapping gently against the sides.  Then it slows to stillness.

 

**Author's Note:**

> the epigraphs are slightly edited from the e.e. cummings poem "maggie and milly and molly and may"; chapter titles are inspired by a poem by Eliza Jaeger...can't find an exact version online, but it's something like:  
> "All our lives, the tears we cry/ are absorbed by thirsty pores/They flow into our bloodstreams/  
> so that children are made of freshwater/and old men are made of the sea."


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